Never Know How Much I Love You
by of self
Summary: The thing is, he thinks he loves her. Chad/Tawni.


…

never know how much I love you

…

"Hey Blondie!" You call out so loud that the whole set swivels around to look. She hates it and you know that but sometimes you think you live just to annoy her. To be more than just a passing blip on her radar.

"_Cooper_." The way she says it, you can hear derision and disdain just drip off it and yet it has be one of the sweetest sounds ever heard. That's Tawni Hart for you. She combines sweetness and tartness in a way that you would never know until it kicked you in the guts and left a sweet glaze of honey over your ego.

"Where's Sonny?" You blurt out, not knowing what else to say. Five years on the same set, in the same social circles and in the same residential area – you live opposite to her and you still don't know what to say. But maybe it's not a case of knowing what to say or what not to say. It's a case of _not knowing _how to react around a girl you think you always might have been in love with. Or half in love with. Or whatever, you just don't know. About love or half love that is. The thing is you think about her more than you _care_ or _want_ to admit.

"Do I look like I'm her keeper or something? Really, Cooper. Employ your own minions to sniff her out for you."

"I am doing exactly that." You smirk in that way that curves half your mouth upwards and you are rewarded with an angry blush that fails to take off from a pretty rosy pink and morph into a red.

"Puh-lease. I'd hang myself before I even came ten feet close to working with you." She's so polite, so sweet and yet the disgust in her voice, hearing that is something like watching your heart run through a shredder and coming out in neat bloody strips. And when jabs like that hit too close to home, you revert back to your defense mechanism of unbearable jerk-assness. Actually, you don't have anything else other than layer upon layer of asshole. What do you know; Chad Dylan Cooper is a man of _substance_. _Shallow_ substance a mocking voice somewhere in your head amends.

"You'd never make the cut to begin with Blondie. Too old and not pretty enough." And just that easily, you can words. Words like that roll off your tongue like water but they are words which you would never believe because you know: _you know_ they can never be true.

Her grey eyes flash and water, and for a moment you think you can see a naked vulnerability but it goes as quickly as it comes.

"_Is that so_?" So distant, so reserved, so cold and you wonder, when did she ever get like this. But strangely enough ice and blond and cool pink gloss suit her much better than rosy cheeks and warm smiles. "At least I have a personality which takes up more space than just my little pinky. You and your little hanger-ons, _not_ so much."

Straight to the gut and she never misses a target. You have no reply for her. No smooth insult that will draw fire from her eyes and razor sharp retorts from her mouth.

"Cat got your tongue?" She questions amusedly and you stare. You stare like you are starved and yes you are and you stare cause god – what the fuck is all of this? These five years of not knowing what your feelings are, of a constant back and forth of sharp words, of honey glazed insults, it's all madness.

You are still staring when Zora pops up from somewhere like a malicious imp and eyes you in cruel amusement.

"Take your UST and go someplace else pretty boy. Don't crowd the hallways."

And Tawni actually laughs. She laughs in your face and maybe she's spitting upon feelings you have nursed for a long time cause god, she won't even acknowledge that something might actually be there between you both but it's the first time you've seen her laugh so openly and genuinely and you take back what you said about ice and blond and think that even warm and real and so _close_, she looks amazing.

"Good one Zora. Best joke I've heard all day." Gripping her stomach as her shoulders shake and her cheeks flush, she moves away only stop right in front of Sonny who wanders onto the scene, looking bemused.

Tawni takes a look at Sonny and doubles over once more and then she goes away, spasming in the throes of laughter and you want to laugh and cry, cause fuck, you've never been this close to her – too see something beyond the surface and all that you will ever to be her is a joke and rival and someone in the same social circle. Like two acquaintances drifting through the same sea, in similar boats, and going similar ways but never crossing paths.

"What happened? And why do you look like-"Sonny searches for an adequate word that will describe your expression but the truth is that there are none.

Cause it falls somewhere in between mockery, love, ice and never knowing.

"You got caught in the wrong place, the wrong time, with the _wrong_ person. Shit happens." Zora sums it up neatly for you and with a not unkind smile; she disappears to wherever she came from.

"You were looking for _me _Chad?"

"Yeah. And now I found you." You answer and laugh like the burden of the world is off your shoulders.

But you lost _her_ too.

You never had her though.

…

never know how much I care

…

a/n – Big fan of Tawni. I'm aware it's OOC and shitty but don't watch TV for six months and then get back to me on being perfectly in-character. As it were, I'm finding my feet by slowly easing myself out of cable deprivation. Also, first piece I've written in months. Shit load of fun it is to be writing again. :) Also props to Mocheal Buble for the lyrics to Fever.


End file.
